Changeless Chama Valley - New Mexico travel narrative

Sunset, Oct, 1999 by Matthew Jaffe

O'Keeffe country, a great train ride - and the occasional cosmic event - make this one of New Mexico's best drives

It slices the late-afternoon sky over northern New Mexico's Chama Valley - a turquoise streak, a shooting star.

I am alone by the side of the road in a tiny village called Los Brazos. With no one to confirm that this daylight meteorite is real, I look for some proof, past the purple Brazos Cliffs and back up to where space and sky meet.

As if there would really be another one right there.

A minor cosmic event like this one always comes as a surprise, but maybe a little less so in this part of New Mexico. The region seems to have "more sky than earth," said artist Georgia O'Keeffe, who found her greatest inspiration in its crenellated cliffs, consuming sky, and sometimes intimidating isolation. It is a land both of the desert and of the high country, a place where the Old West and the Old World coexist, and where the old ways sometimes bump up against the New Age.

Thus, I hear lots of theories about just what that shooting star symbolized: that love was about to enter my life (actually it was about to exit), that my departed father was sending me a sign (a bit flashy for his taste), and, this being New Mexico, that it wasn't a meteorite at all but a UFO (save it for The X-Files).

All I know is that I have never seen anything both so ephemeral and so beautiful. And finally a friend from Tesuque gives me something to work with: These events are auspicious, but you can't always know their meaning. "It's just a reminder of what's out there and to keep paying attention."

So, for the next few days, that's what I do, in a place where there's a lot to pay attention to.

AT HOME IN LOS BRAZOS

Casa de Martinez sits in Los Brazos, about 15 miles south of Chama, just off U.S. 84, the main route through the valley. Clorinda and Medardo Sanchez opened the house as a bed-and-breakfast in 1987. "What's wonderful about this house is that it has always been a people house, a place with a lot of visitors. It has become that again."

So says Clorinda as we sit with Medardo in the adobe's living room. The oldest section dates to 1861, when Clorinda's great-grandfather Fernando Martinez arrived from Abiquiu; back then, Apache raids were still a fact of life in this remote country. Martinez was just 13; over the years he became one of the community's most successful sheep ranchers.

With its pitched tin roof, the adobe doesn't look much like the Pueblo-style buildings found in Taos and Santa Fe. That hint of Switzerland is no accident; Medardo says Swiss lumberjacks working the nearby mountains likely brought their building traditions, and the angled roof helps handle the heavy snows that strike the area.

Martinez often traded with Native Americans, so there are many artifacts: Jicarilla Apache baskets, San Juan Pueblo pottery, and Navajo rugs. A roll-top desk arrived via the Santa Fe Trail, and my room (once a classroom) is furnished with Martinez's bedroom set.

Clorinda recalls the time her 96-year-old grandmother visited and looked around the house with a pleased expression on her face. "She said it just reminded her of the past," says Clorinda. "She said it reminded her so much of when she first came here as a little girl."

Change doesn't happen quickly in Los Brazos. Unlike most places, there are actually fewer people living here now than in the past. Ask about population, and locals will likely estimate the number of families instead of individuals.

And one of the hottest issues goes back 150 years. Some of these families have property claims dating to the original Spanish and Mexican land grants. In 1967, the land-grant question flared into violence when a band of armed farmers and ranchers temporarily seized the Rio Arriba County Courthouse. The most recent attempt to settle the argument was the Guadalupe-Hidalgo Treaty Land Claims Act of 1999; it stalled in Congress earlier this year.

The upper valley's biggest draw is the narrow-gauge Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad. It's beautiful any time of year, but Medardo tells me I'm catching it at a perfect time: The aspens are turning, and the snow hasn't yet begun.

The next morning, the train leaves the river valley behind as the steam engine climbs the slope between New Mexico and Colorado. Clouds of steam pour from its stack, casting billowing shadows that roll over the golden grasses, up the trunks, and across the aspens' yellow canopy.

By the time I return, I'm spent. From the highway, a light in the house provides a guiding beacon. For 140 years, people have known this same sensation upon returning here: I feel like I'm back home.

A LAND OF AGE AND ARTISTRY

About 30 miles south of Los Brazos, U.S. 84 passes through country markedly different from the upper valley. The banded, eroded sandstone bluffs and mesas are familiar, more classically New Mexico.

Collectively the area around Ghost Ranch Conference Center and Abiquiu has come to be known as "O'Keeffe country" - not a surprising designation considering the artist's near-mythical status and this landscape's role in her work. But the area saw its first permanent settlements as early as the 11th century, and it's famous for its 215-million-year-old dinosaur finds. The artist was the new kid around here.